Glamorizing Environmental Terrorism: Animal Planet’s “Whale Wars”

In real life I work in a hospital. my job requires me from time-to-time to sit at a patient’s bedside for prolonged periods, performing my duties. If the patient is conscious and watching TV, I get to watch wathever they’re watching, for the period of time (usually hours) it takes to perform my duties.

I’m a big animal lover myself (a dog and four cats), and for the record, I think the whaling that goes on in Japan is escessive and incredibly cruel to the whales. There is absolutely no product that can be gained from whales that is not synthesized commercially, or substituted though farmed livestock. Just so you know where I stand.

But this WHALE WARS. show is really something else. A bunch of Greenpeace-niks are riding around on a coverted cargo ship are posing as modern-day “pirates” and doing anything they can to interfere with Japanese whaling ships. Sounds sort ofnoble, in a way.

Until you actually see what they’re doing — and “Whale Wars” provides that amply. As you can see from the picture on their website, these enviro-terrorists:

Circle, buzz, and harass the whaling ships with both inflatable boats as well as a helicopter,

Throw bottles of noxious chemicals on the ships to sicken workers or destroy machinery,

Board the whaling ships physically and try to interfere with operations,

Place their inflatable boats and even their ship (The “Steve Irwin”) between the ships and their prey,

Throw flashbang grenades onboard the whaling ships,

Use water cannons to knock people on the whaling ships off their feet, and

attempt to foul the ship’s propeller, leaving the ships stranded at sea.

In fact, these little pseudo-pirates are quite proud of the damage and injuries they cause and the harm they potentially put the whalers into. They even have a special page on their website detailing their tactics, and illustrating their tctics with videos.

Now, before I’d seen this show, I was generally sympathetic to the cause and motivations of the anti-whaling crowd. After seeing this show, I’m horrified. If you foul the prop on a ship hundreds of miles from the coast, these people could die! If you throw a “slippery bomb” on the deck of a ship at sea, you can cause people to fall overboard and drown; the same thing with using water cannons on the ships.

And to make matters even worse, these enviro-nitwits embrace a kind of faux-pirate “chic” that must scare the crap out of these whalers. Think about it for a minute: a black ship flying a pirate flag comes alongside and boarders wearing black masks with skull and crossbones on them board your ship!

Frankly, they’re lucky nobody has taken a shot at them yet! That’s got to be terrifying, considering how often actual pirate attacks occur in places like the Persian Gulf.

One of the shows stands out as a miracle that no one was killed. A whaling ship is sighted, and about 6 people jump into one of the inflatable boats to pusue the ship. Mind you, this is almost dusk, when launching or navigating a small boat on the open sea is even more trachorous than it usually is. A few minutes later, the helicopter follows them (It takes a few minutes to spool up the helicopter for launch than it does a boat.)

They can’t find the Zodiac (inflatable boat.) By now it’s dark; the Zodiac has no lights, and they can’t raise them on the radio. So what does the “Steve Irwin” do? They call everyone to the bridge for a conference. Swear to God, it looked for a moment like an episode of “Star Trek” with all the people standing around on the bridge yammering — except that the common theme is “I don’t know what to do!” The captain sits at the back of the bridge, arms crossed, looking disgusted at all these landlubbers milling around his bridge, but even still he yields to the dysfunctional dynamic and does . . . nothing.

And the ship sails on. If that damned Zodiac has overturned or been run over in the dark, those guys are freezing to death in the water while the nouveau-hippies on the bridge fumble their way through pseudo-democracy. Makes you wonder where this “Master Mariner” of a Captain got his ship certification from that it allows him to abandon potential distress in missing crew members without even searching for them.

Finally, just about one of the pseudo-hippies grows a neuron and decides a search pattern would be a good idea, the Zodiac suddenly reappears. Seems nobody on the Zodiac knew how to operate the radio or the satellite phone.

Oh yeah, that’s one great bunch of sailors you got there. Just incredible nobody is dead yet, I tell ya.

And let’s not forget — these people are committing crimes on the high seas. They are asaulting and threatening other sailors; damaging private property; and committing acts of what we would call terrorism if they had Iraqi or Afghan passports and were doing them on airplanes.

It’s a reality show that shows people being criminals. It’s as simple as that. I can’t wait for that show about the Crips and the Bloods and their youthful antics.